Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in the background section are not prior art to the claims in this disclosure and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Radio stations typically produce and broadcast audible content that is intended to appeal to a variety of different listeners. For example, a news anchor affiliated with the radio station may read aloud news stories from each of a variety of different predetermined categories, such as sports, entertainment, politics, weather, and national news.
Although some listeners may be interested in audible versions of news stories from all of the predetermined categories, other listeners may have different interests. For example, one listener may be interested in only sports and entertainment, while another listener may be interested in only politics and national news. In either case, the listener may be presented with audible content that does not align with his or her interests. As a result, the listener may find the news program unappealing.
One way to address this shortcoming of typical “one size fits most” radio station broadcasts is to implement a system configured to provide subscribers personalized audible news stories tailored to each subscriber's interests. In operation, such a personalized news system may be configured to generate and distribute personalized playlists of audio files comprising audible versions of news stories to subscribers for playback on the subscribers' computing devices, e.g., smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktops, and media players.